On Thursday, October 31, at AECT 2013 in Anaheim, I’ll be conducting a “round table” discussion/presentation about a manuscript I’ve written: “Direct Measurement of Learners’ Graphing Interactions for Automated Formative Assessment in a Digital Tablet Environment.” It’s a conceptualization of a digital graphing platform that can persist across informal and formal learning environments.

Here’s the abstract for the manuscript:

This methodological paper explores theoretical and practical foundations for the development of measurement instruments embedded in a tablet-based interactive digital graphing platform for use in unobtrusive automated formative assessment of learners’ performance when plotting and/or visualizing data as all or part of a learning task. Practical matters of data plotting and manipulation as formative performance assessment are addressed. Exemplary tasks are provided as a basis for further examination and discussion of identified practical matters. Modeling learners’ growth in graphing ability over time is explored in the context of experimental research of cognitive factors of graphing interactions.

I’ve also made the manuscript available as a whitepaper here on my website: ErlandsonBE_Direct-Measurement-Graphing-Interactions. Please feel free to read it and give me any constructive feedback you may have. Questions also welcomed! Let’s start a discussion…

As I was a walking home from the fitness studio late this morning, the rain was picking up again. There are several large puddles on the rather crooked sidewalk between the studio and my house. As I rounded the corner, over the din of the raindrops I heard this repetitive high pitched squeal, coupled with the occasional splash.

Into view comes a small girl, probably between the ages of three and five, covered from head to toe in a raincoat and galoshes. She’s several paces ahead of the rest of her family. She’s yelling (singing, really) over and over again, “I don’t want to get wet, I don’t want to get wet, I don’t want to get wet!” as she gallops from puddle to puddle. Finally, she notices me coming from the other direction and stops dead in her tracks. Rain dripping through the soaked dark brown locks protruding from either side of the hood of her jacket, she makes eye contact. I flash her a quick smile to let her know I’m harmless, and then she cracks one of the most devious shit-eating-grins I’ve ever seen on a kid that age (even trumping my nephew Bennett!).

And then it was right back to puddle splashing and singing her refrain.

Last night, my dad and mom told me about a patch of Turk’s Cap Lilies along US Highway 21 between Glade Valley and Sparta. Dad asked me to take some time today to go and shoot them if I could. I did. Despite the neck deep thicket of thistles, thorns, and nettles…it was totally worth it. I only got a few really good shots, but, these flowers continue to pique my interest.

I continue to be impressed by the Autostitcher app for iPhone. It’s far from perfect (notice the submerged rocks at the bottom left of the image) but considering where this picture was taken (and uploaded on the spot!), I can’t complain too much.

I found myself down at Carmel Beach last evening to hang out with a buddy of mine (and his two cool pooches) at the beach to watch the sun and waves, bitch about the week, and talk science.

Eventually the sun went down, my buddy went home, and I stuck around to get some post-sunset surf shots. I love the effect of slow shutter speeds on the waves. Using a circular polarizer adds to the glow of the waves, I think.

In this particular shot, I kept trying to get the timing just right (with about a 4 second exposure, if I remember correctly) to get a good spray off the rock that you can see there. I think this one came out pretty well…

I’ve been enjoying exploring the increased flexibility of my new Canon 7D, and although I like the fact that the new lens I got has image stabilization — allowing for on-the-fly closeups like this bee — I’ve come to realize that it’s causing me to forgo the tripod more than I should. I’m mostly happy with this shot, but I know it could be so much better with a tripod. The sad thing is, I had my tripod with me, strapped to my awesome new slingbag, but I just got caught up in the moment.
Ahh, well. Next time…